Port McNeill Mayor Gerry Furney convenes meeting of B.C. mayors, councilors and community leaders to support the B.C. forest industry's liquidation of oldgrowth forests and fight the conservationists' boycott of bad B.C. forest companies like International Forest Products.

Western Canada Wilderness Committee (WCWC) campaigners will mount an informational protest in front of the Richmond Executive Inn, 7311 Westminster Hwy, Richmond, B.C., tomorrow - Friday September 22, starting at 7:30 am.

"We will be there to bring to the attention of those attending the Operation Defend meeting that defending the status quo in the forest industry will not work," said WCWC director Joe Foy.

Commenting on why he was not attending the meeting Foy said, "We mailed in the $75 fee to attend the meeting several weeks ago - but today our cheque was couriered back to us saying we are not allowed in. That's why we'll be outside with our picket signs."

Foy says that an August 24, 2000 information package was mailed to various B.C. mayors, councilors and community leaders asking them to join together to fight the "current campaign by the extremist enviro-elite". The cover letter signed by Port McNeill mayor Gerry Furney is under the letterhead of a forest industry support group called the British Columbia Council of Resource Communities.

Referring to B.C. and international conservation groups Furney writes: "In the past their campaigns have included tree-spiking, road blockades, bridge burning and equipment damage. Their current campaign is directed at American and overseas customers for our exports of lumber and pulp."

"I find Mayor Furney's comments to be untrue and inflammatory. They are an insult to democracy and the right of all people to speak freely and to use their conscience when purchasing products," fumed Foy. "By trying to link calls for consumer boycotts of wood products from unsustainably logged oldgrowth rainforests with criminal acts like burning bridges and tree spiking, Furney is defaming people who are simply exercising their democratic right to bring about rainforest preservation and ecoforestry," said Foy.

WCWC is calling for consumers to avoid purchasing lumber produced by International Forest Products (Interfor) because of the company's poor environmental and human rights record in B.C. WCWC works within the law and has always condemned acts of violence and property damage.

WCWC campaigners will be handing out the conservation group's latest publication-a newspaper about the Stoltmann Wilderness, including the Elaho Valley where loggers beat up several conservationists last year. Here Interfor is actively cutting thousand-year-old trees while WCWC has been advocating they be preserved in a National Park Reserve. The WCWC newspaper explains why a boycott of Interfor is needed at this time.

For more information contact Joe Foy - (604) 880-2580 (cellular phone)